Before I get into why Britain is no longer Great, a task that could take all week, let me just say that there is no international community and Canada should stop pretending there is when our politicians or judges go looking for new laws to emulate or new ways to interpret old ones.

Which bring me to Britain’s ridiculous laws surrounding “racist” speech. A little while ago we told you about the yob tweeting allegedly racist rants about a black footballer who collapsed in the middle of a game. He was sentenced to 56 days in jail for what should never be a crime. Say something stupid and feel the pain of being socially ostracized, that I’m all in favour of, but jail?

Well now we find out that Scottish woman has narrowly escaped prison after calling someone an “English tw#t.” No, the missing letter is not i but is a vowel. Here’s the story from The Daily Mail with a hat tip to BCF.

A Scottish great-grandmother was shown mercy in court today after she was branded a racist for calling a man an ‘English t*at’ in a row over a disabled resident parking space.

Charity worker Georgina McCole, 64, wept as a sheriff admonished her for hurling racist abuse at Leslie Bush during the argument over whether her granddaughter, who is not disabled, was entitled to use the space.

Now the woman escaped jail but my question is why did the judge even hear the case?

First off, that “English tw#t” had called the granny a “Scottish git” but he wasn’t charged. But that misses the larger question of why police, prosecutors and judges are spending time prosecuting people for calling each other names in an argument?

This is not a matter for the courts but this is where speech laws in hyper-PC Britain have led.

Now what does this all have to do with ignoring the “international community?”

Whenever politicians, bureaucrats or even judges in this country end up looking to change Canada into their version of Britain’s hell or Europe’s socialist disaster they invoke the “international community” and the need to mirror other members of the OECD.

Well that is where this leads.

Of course we could also mimic Sweden in the push for state run daycare for all, where judges threaten parents with jail for failing to comply.

Germany starting gun registry

by Kris Sims
Parliamentary bureau
OTAWA — Germany is building its own gun registry, complying with a future database rule that will cover the entire European Union.
Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, is reporting that the decision in the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, was made on the 10th anniversary of a school massacre.
In April 2002, an expelled student killed 16 people before killing himself in the city of Erfurt.
“This brings about a new dimension,” German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said.
He said, however, that the registry wouldn’t necessarily prevent another massacre from taking place.
The two most recent mass shootings took place after one perpetrator bought his weapons with fake papers and the other carried out the killing while wielding an already-registered weapon.
The move has some fire arms advocates in Canada shaking their heads.
“We just got rid of the long-gun registry here, which only targeted and tracked law-abiding people and wasted billions of dollars. With Germany centralizing their registry through one government office, they are going to suffer the same fate,” Tony Bernardo, spokesman for the Canadian Shooting Sport Association, said. “The last time Germany insisted on a central database for their firearms was in 1937 and we know what happened next: the state disarmed the law-abiding populace, because they knew where the guns were, and then rolled right over them.”
Under the new law, German police will be allowed to enter people’s homes unannounced to see if their legal weapons are properly stored.
There are an estimated 10 million firearms owned in Germany, which has a population of about 82 million.
The European Union has mandated that all member states must have a computerized data-filing system registering all firearms in place by 2014. It is unclear if that includes only marked numbers from the weapons or the names and addresses of the owners.

If you’ve paid any attention to the news lately you know that students across Quebec have been “striking” and rioting to protest rising tuition for universities and colleges. Well if you are feeling smug because you or your kids are not attending school in Quebec, feeel smug no longer.

Nancy MacBain, staff representative for CUPE local 3906, which represents teaching employees at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., confirmed to QMI Agency on Sunday that the local recently voted to give $10,000.

Wayne Dealy, chair of the CUPE union representing education workers at the University of Toronto, told QMI Agency that his local gave $20,000.

He said the money was given as a gesture of solidarity and that his union has a broad commitment to students across the country.

Swimming in red ink

by John Robson

Newfoundland and Labrador’s latest budget makes it official. Only Saskatchewan is not dripping red ink. Every other province — and the feds — are bathing or at least washing their feet in the stuff. And yes, you should be worried.

People, including the federal finance minister, insist that Canada is in comparatively good financial health. All that means, as C.D. Howe Institute president William Robson said two years ago, is “We’re the least ugly contestant in the beauty contest.” And all this rouge isn’t making us any prettier.

True, formally Ottawa is “only” in hock to the tune of a third of our economy. But even that saddles the feds with $30 billion a year in interest payments and rising. And unlike Britain, Greece or even the U.S., Canada has a major problem with provincial debt. Read more…

Brian Lilley is the host of Byline on Sun News Network and a senior correspondent for Sun Media's Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa. His weekly column is published in more than 30 daily newspapers across Canada and he appears on several leading talk radio stations.